WEBVTT

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The geologist Eldridge Morse
and the science fiction writer

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Kim Stanley Robinson and
I were having lunch one

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time in Davis, California.

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These are people who are always
thinking in large frames.

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Kim Stanley was the author of
the Mars Trilogy or Red Mars,

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Blue Mars and Green Mars, a
great science fiction trilogy,

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if you like science fiction.

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And he is taken by
people who are actually

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in the sciences as the
most scientifically

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astute and correct of all
the science fiction writers.

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still you can't read it.

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But Eldridge was
telling us about--

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he said well there are some
little bits of matter on planet

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Earth that were created
before the Earth was

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created that they're older
than our galaxy possibly.

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And I said Eldridge how in
the heck could that happen.

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Now how are you
going to do that?

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And he said, well
I'll tell you why.

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And this is the poem for
it, just a very short poem.

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A rain of black rocks
coming out of space

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onto deep blue
ice in Antarctica.

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9,000 feet high,
scattered for miles.

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Crunched inside of
them yet older matter

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from times before
our very sun That's

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called get older manners.

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He says that's true.

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But before our sun
was created, we

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got some little bits of
matter from before that time.

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What are you going
to do with it?

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Put it on your alter.

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These are a little section
of short, a very short poems

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called Glacier Ghosts.

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Flowers in the night sky.

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I thought forest fires
burning to the North.

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Yellow Nomex jacket thrown in
the cab, hard hat, boots, a gun

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to the truck up the
road scrambling.

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It came out on a flat
stretch with a view.

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Shimmering blue green streamers
and a red glow down the sky.

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Stop storms on the sun.

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Solar winds going by.

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That's the night
of the red Aurora

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Borealis seen as far South as
northern California April 2001.

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I actually thought the woods
were on fire everywhere

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to the North.

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I said but it's too wet but
I still couldn't believe it.

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